tended ----'s lectures on
Geology and Zoology, but they were incredibly dull. The sole effect they
produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read
a book on Geology, or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel sure
that I was prepared for a philosophical treatment of the subject; for
an old Mr. Cotton in Shropshire, who knew a good deal about rocks,
had pointed out to me two or three years previously a well-known large
erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, called the "bell-stone"; he
told me that there was no rock of the same kind nearer than Cumberland
or Scotland, and he solemnly assured me that the world would come to an
end before any one would be able to explain how this stone came where
it now lay. This produced a deep impression on me, and I meditated over
this wonderful stone. So that I felt the keenest delight when I first
read of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders, and I gloried
in the progress of Geology. Equally striking is the fact that I, though
now only sixty-seven years old, heard the Professor, in a field lecture
at Salisbury Craigs, discoursing on a trapdyke, with amygdaloidal
margins and the strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all
around us, say that it was a fissure filled with sediment from above,
adding with a sneer that there were men who maintained that it had
been injected from beneath in a molten condition. When I think of this
lecture, I do not wonder that I determined never to attend to Geology.

From attending ----'s lectures, I became acquainted with the curator
of the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards published a large
and excellent book on the birds of Scotland. I had much interesting
natural-history talk with him, and he was very kind to me. He gave me
some rare shells, for I at that time collected marine mollusca, but with
no great zeal.

My summer vacations during these two years were wholly given up to
amusements, though I always had some book in hand, which I read with
interest. During the summer of 1826 I took a long walking tour with
two friends with knapsacks on our backs through North wales. We walked
thirty miles most days, including one day the ascent of Snowdon. I
also went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a servant with
saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns were devoted to shooting
chiefly at Mr. Owen's, at Woodhouse, and at my Uncle Jos's (Josiah
Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etru